Family of Vietnam Hoa Hao Buddhist Questions Death in Custody Ruled ‘Suicide’
RFA - 05/04/2017
Authorities in Vietnam’s Vinh Long province on Thursday announced that a Hoa Hao
Buddhist follower had committed suicide in police custody, but the man’s family
has questioned their account, saying the “evidence” that proves he killed
himself is inconclusive.
Vinh Long provincial vice director Pham Van Ngan
told reporters that a police investigative unit arrested Nguyen Huu Tan, 38, in
Binh Minh township’s Thanh Phuoc commune after searching his home on May 2 for
“disseminating anti-state documents,” according to a report by the official Thanh
Nien news.
“On the morning of May 3, when an investigator
went to talk with Tan [at the Vinh Long detention center] with a monitoring
camera in the room, Tan asked for a cigarette and a bottle of water,” the report
quoted Ngan as saying.
“As soon as the investigator left the room, Tan
went into the investigator’s briefcase, took out a letter opener, and cut his
own throat. Within three minutes, the investigator returned to the room, but Tan
was in shock due to blood loss and he died shortly after,” he said.
Ngan told reporters that the Vinh Long police
allowed Tan’s family to view the CCTV footage of the incident “right after” it
occurred and to witness the autopsy on his body, the report said.
“The family understands the cause of Tan’s death
to be suicide and that there are no other factors involved,” Ngan said.
Nguyen Hoang Hoc, a spokesman for the Vinh Long
People’s Committee, told the same briefing that after news of Tan’s death broke,
“many websites ran incorrect reports about the incident,” according to Thanh
Nien.
“The authorities have also identified some
websites located in foreign countries that called Tan’s family and wrote
incorrect details about the case in order to incite the people,” Hoc said.
The report provided no details on what specific
documents Tan had been accused of disseminating, or whether anything had been
found during the search of his home.
Vietnam’s government officially recognizes the
Hoa Hao religion, which has some two million followers across the country, but
imposes harsh controls on dissenting Hoa Hao groups that do not follow the
state-sanctioned branch.
Rights groups say that authorities routinely
harass followers of the unapproved groups, prohibiting public readings of the
Hoa Hao founder’s writings and discouraging worshipers from visiting Hoa Hao
pagodas.
Account questioned
Tan’s father, a Hoa Hao monk known as Thich Phap
Quan, whose secular name is Nguyen Huu Quan, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service that
the family does not believe he killed himself because of the extent of the
injuries he sustained.
“They told me that he cut his own throat and
committed suicide, but why was his head injured and how was he able to cut
through nearly the entirety of his own neck, leaving only a little bit of flesh
connected,” he asked.
“[When we went in to see him] he was on the
floor with blood sprayed everywhere. I almost fainted when I saw it. I want to
ask the government to investigate this case.”
Quan also told RFA that CCTV video showing the
incident, which police have not released to the public, is inconclusive because
the picture is unclear, and questioned whether the subject of the footage is
actually his son.
“I could not see the face of the person in the
video, but he was wearing a prison uniform and my son was never convicted, so he
shouldn’t have been wearing that uniform,” Quan said.
I saw the blurred figure of a policeman sitting
near him … He went out to get water and the person in the room grabbed a knife
on the table. It looked like a letter opener. He started hacking, about three
times,” he said.
“I could not see the face, but they said that my
son committed suicide. I saw the person fall down, but I never saw the face.”
Deaths in custody
Tan’s death is the latest of several in Vietnam
that have occurred under suspicious circumstances while in the custody of the
authorities.
In October 2016, 45-year-old Nguyen Cao Tuan
died from what was believed to be internal injuries a day after he was
questioned by police in Vinh Phuc province over his alleged theft of a mobile
phone.
Tuan had returned home with visible injuries to
his legs and ankles, and told relatives he had been beaten by the police.
In January the same year, 46-year-old Dang Quang
Vinh died at a hospital in Nghe An province after being held for nearly two
weeks by police who suspected him of stealing two boxes of bricks.
Vinh was in good health ahead of his detention,
according to his family, but an officer who saw him the night before he died
described him as being in weak condition and experiencing trouble breathing.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has said that
police throughout Vietnam abuse people in their custody, in some cases leading
to death, and has urged the country’s government to take action to end the
problem.
Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.